Dictatorship 101: A Brief Beginner's Guide

People of Basenji! This guide is meant to help starting players get the ropes of the game with a little more detail beyond the scope of the tutorial in game. There is a lot to the game, and a bit of information can go a long way into helping you make a stable totally-fair-democratic-institution. [THIS GUIDE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND NOT COMPLETE]

Introduction

Welcome to Rogue State! If you're like me, you've been desperately looking for a guide to help get your bearings beyond the encyclopedia in game, and since there don’t appear to be many, I’m here to help!

This is by no means an extensive guide, and there is *lot* to the game I've not covered yet, but if it helps you dig a little deeper into the game, I’m entirely for it. Please keep in mind all of this is from repeated game attempts, and my assessments are more of art than a science. I plan to add more articles, so forgive that this barely scratches the surface.

Opening Day: How to not suck and die by turn 5.

Well, you’re a dictator now! Rad! Welcome to the land of sitting on your ass oppressing your population and- Oh, your brother needs a cabinet position. Farouk is your elder brother, and was the obvious choice to be the president in your stead. Obviously, he despises your guts now because you managed to snatch it from him. Yet he’s very popular with the people, and so if you don’t place him on your cabinet, you’re going to be ousted. So where do you stick him?

There are 4 minsters (Including Farouk) and 5 cabinet positions. They are…

Communications (+1 all factions)
Intelligence (+50% Intelligence Breakthroughs)
Military (+2 Loyalty per turn)
Finance (+3m per turn)
Foreign (+1 all neighbor approval)

Farouk, being the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that he is, must be placed in something. However, he actively sabotages whatever you choose to put him in. There are, effectively, only two remotely good ideas of where to place him. They are Finance and Intelligence. Because if he controls the Military Loyalty, it’s a matter of time until you’re dead, if he is Foreign he’ll poison your relation with the USA unless you have Oil, and if he’s communications you’re losing approval every turn with everyone.

If he’s finance, he steals 5m from the treasury every turn. And yea, that sucks, but 5 mil isn’t much, and it stops him from actively damaging anything else.
If he’s Intelligence, he slows down your spy network… If you ever actually build one. More peaceful games could make him quite impotent.

Either way, neither of those options are ‘fatal’ compared to the others.

You NEED to have a Military minister, because the +2 Loyalty adds up. A loyal military is a major component. Likewise, a Communications minister is a steady safety net for you.

I like to have Communication, Military, Foreign, and Farouk stuck in finance, myself. I’ll take the tax hit.

Soon as you hit office, you’ll get a phone call from a neighboring country. Be nice, then hang up. Ain’t much to say yet.

Now, on to setting up the starting policies! You’re going to have cash to burn, so raise your disability and homeless shelters up to tier 4. I know that seems arbitrary, but when the support net finally hits both fundamentals and liberals will like you. Plus, you’re going to have money. So yay you. As far as policies themselves go, it’s up to you. You can’t set it to please everyone, but you *can* marginalize the damage a bit. I try to get the fundamentalists to neutral, the capitalists and patriots on my side, and minimize the negativity from the liberals, as best I can. The liberals mean well, but they have a conflict with all other factions. Expect them to be a bit tricky early on.

You can raise the tax rate a bit, if you like, to give yourself some breathing room, but I generally don’t raise it beyond 20 percent. Instead, slowly crawl the tax rate up. Thanks to 1.03, here are the rules to taxation!

For a 1% increase the player experiences a 7% drop in approval over three turns (-4%, -2% and -1% respectively). For a 2% increase, approval would drop 19% over six turns (-4%, -4%, -4%, -4%. -2%, -1%). For a 3% increase, approval would drop 31% over nine turns, etc. For a 1% decrease in the tax rate, approval rises by 6% over three turns (+3%, +2%, +1% respectively). For a 2% decrease in the tax rate, approval rises by 15% over six turns. And so forth.

Liberals weather tax increases better than other factions, and only receive a 6% drop in approval over three turns for a one percent increase (or a 15% drop over six turns for a two percent increase).

Capitalists enjoy tax breaks more than other factions, and receive a 7% increase in approval over three turns for a one percent drop (or 25% increase over six turns for a two percent drop).
Tax breaks now provide small boosts to your GDP, and tax increases now provide a small penalty to your GDP.

As you can see, taxations is an all powerful monster of people’s approval ratings.

You’re going to be building some starter buildings. You’re going to have to choose between +3m or +10 military approval and accelerated starter buildings. I personally choose to go with the Medical Teams (The +3m) because while sitting on my hands for turns 2 and 4 is annoying, 3 mil per turn is 180m by the end of turn 60. For freeeeeeeeee. You’ll get the military approval anyway from your minster.

Try to adjust your earnings and weather the storm of public approval best you can early on. Your GDP usually take a bit of a hit early on. I like to support the capitalists in early builds to try to keep the economy alive. But we’ll get to that.

Makin' Money: Get rich or die because Farouk is a horrible brother.

What’s the point of being a despot if you’re not raking in some stable cash flow? There are a lot of ways to make money in Rogue State (I’m lying there are like three) and we’re going to cover them. You need money for near everything, so here's a quick look at ideas to get you started.

Taxation.

Ah, Taxes. The easiest way to take money from the hard working people is to tax it from them. Raising the tax rate to 30 percent or so will allow you to get massive sums from your population, allowing you to rush buildings you desire and finally buy that damn war plane you heard so much about from your minsters. Only problem is it makes the people freakin’ despise you. Still, in times of adversity, small tax hikes (Or really large ones) could be the key to saving your nation. Better for them to hate you than be too weak to fight a war.

Trade.

Alright, so the trading system took me a minute to figure out, so here’s the simple and dirty version. At the end of your ‘beginner’ building phase, you will be given two resources. They are usually random. At the same time, all your neighbors have two resources. If you’re lucky, all of you have different ones. If you’re really lucky, you’ll have oil. Oil makes the US love you.

Regardless of what you have, see if you get any bonuses for it. If you do, super, if not, oh well. Because truth be told the bonuses are really not that significant with the minor exception of oil. Minor plus one or two approval ratings are nice, but you’re usually going to have to trade with your neighbors for it to get the full extent. Which means you’re paying, if you’re lucky, 10-25m for the privilege per turn of whatever bonus you acquire from them. That’s usually pretty meh.

Instead, trade your resources to others. You still keep any bonuses you have even if you trade it away, and if the economy is good for the resource (If it’s highly priced on the chart when you sell it) you can rake in rapidly a crazy amount of money and the trading nation will like you.

There is a slight footnote here: There are two item builds that *are* useful. They are Trendy Cashmere Manufacturing and Smartphone Manufacturing. If you have two of the items and are able to buy the third for cheap, go for it. Because removing the 5 mil expense for the sweatshop and the Reverse Engineering respectively is not bad.

I find a lot of success in basing my economy on trading those two resources and not buying anything from anyone. And no, you can’t directly trade with the US. I tried to figure it out.

Buildings and the United States.

I’m going to talk about one specific strategy I enjoy here. In the Trade and Diplomacy section of the building, you’ll notice the first and second branch lead to Global Shipping Giant. You want this. You want this very much. What it does is make it so when capitalist approval is above 60%, you get a free +15 million every damn turn.

So here’s what I do. I use the starter money from the opening reconstruction to build to the American Hotel (And add in the Tourism bonus for the extra mil) then immediately focus on getting the money together to host the regional summit. This has the added bonus of making people like you as you’re making a deal with them over trade resources. As long as the capitalists are your friends, you’ll have a nice steady source of income from them.

Moreover, this is the quickest way to really get America to like you. And one of the bonuses you can ask of America is for 75m for an ‘investment’ in your nation. It may not be surefire, but it rapidly puts you on a good path to be buddy buddy with the Americans.

Buildings and GDP

There are a few buildings that improve your GDP, which you should be aware of. They are…
Arms Bazaar (Security)
Global Shipping Giant (Trade and Diplomacy)
Reverse Engineering (Trade and Diplomacy)

These raise your GDP. This is a good thing. This is always a good thing.

A Checklist: Trying to keep your people from installing that jerk Farouk.

Here’s a quick summary of the four factions.
Patriots: “I love guns, preserving nature and safety, and telling other nations we’re better than they are.”
Capitalists: “I love money, letting me make money, and you staying out of my business.”
Fundamentalists: “I love the old ways, banning hair-cuts and violent movies, and religion.”
Liberals: “I love social justice, taking care of citizens, and annoying to the other three factions at all times.”

One of the biggest complaints I have about the game is that I can't clearly be told on, say, a spreadsheet, how up or down the public approval is going. I had a number of time where I was adjusting my policies to satisfy a certain faction and it did literally nothing, and they all declined anyway. So here’s a (Incomplete) list of things to consider. Call it a checklist of "Why are they mad at me now?"

What Policies do I have that would piss them off?
Head to your Policies page. See their approval rates. Normally, you’ll have two factions in the red and two in the green. Or three in the red and one in the green by a bunch. Or three in the grey and one in the red. Either way, you’re not likely to see green across the board. And that’s OK. Policies are fairly dynamic in this game, and you can adjust them to satisfy those who are most pissed at you as need be. Notice GDP, Crime, Jobs, Support, and Corruption. Notice I left out Labor Rights because that is actually a bit subjective, while the others have a clear ‘correct’ setting.

Crime: Raise the policing force to tier 4 and courts to 3. Liberals will be slightly annoyed but whatever, patriots will be pleased, and it keeps people safe.
Support: Raise Disability and Homelessness to tier 4 and ride it out until it turns green. The Fundamentalists and the Liberals will be proud of you.
Corruption: Raise your courts to 3-4. You don’t get any direct approval points for it, but it keeps things from getting much worse.
GDP / Jobs: Alright, these two are a bit wonky. Lowering Taxes, building GDP buildings, and encouraging capitalists appear to raise GDP, but it’s a bit guesswork exactly what does what.
Labor Rights: This is the balance between the people being used by the capitalists or being represented fairly as workers. There isn’t a ‘good’ answer there, rather a choice for you to make.

Did I raise taxes?
If you raised taxes 1% within the last 3 turns, this is why. If you raised it 2% in the last six turns, this is why. If you raised it 3% in the last 9 turns… You get it. People don’t like having taxes raised. And a large tax raise will ignore all good policy decisions in the world.

Did I choose something in those random event things?
Ban Fundamentalists from blowing up goats with Dynamite? There you go. Sometimes it’s just sheer bad luck, but random events can really mess with you.

Did someone blow something up in my city?
If you’re under attack I notice approval appears to decline.

Did I make my brother Communications Minister?
Why did you do that.

Do I have Fast Food (Fundamentalists) or Religious Education (Liberals)?
They may be minor stat declines, but if you’re noticing a small dip, these two things may be why.

From Bad to Worse: When everything is terrible and life is hard

In Rogue State there are different crisis’s that your country will face. Basically, your secretary is going to walk into the room and be like "Hey you know how your life is already really hard? It's about to get harder." There are a surprising amount of them, and I've stumbled onto several in repeat playthroughs. Here's a list of what I've seen so far, and how to address them. But I'll save yah some time and tell you the secret right now. You need money. Lots of money.

Financial Crisis

Mr. President, long story short everybody is freakin’ broke and you have 6 turns until the GDP hits the bottom of the barrel. Good luck, have fun.

For this, a number of business sectors, ranging from Banks to Fishing, all desperately need a bailout from you, very very quickly, or they will collapse. The more that collapse, the worse your GDP and your overall economy will be. Each business has a certain number of days until it folds, a certain popularity with the people, and a certain likelihood that *if* it fails it’s bringing the whole damn economy down with it. Honestly, this is my least favorite event because there’s really not to much you can do to plan for it other than “Have 200m sitting on hand” which even then won’t be enough. Your income will tank, your people will be pissed, and you have to throw money into basically nothingness in order to survive it. I’ve tried saving some and letting others fall, and the market still collapses. The best advice I can give is try to be a leech where you can. Make trade deals, and cancel any imports you have. Beg Uncle Sam for money. Sell your extra tanks if you have the improvement for it. Jacking up the tax rate for a turn may help, but it will hurt your already horrific GDP, and the consequences will bite you in the ass.

Infection Crisis

Mr. President, I’ll be honest I just want you to bring Dr. House to our Desert Hellhole, and this seemed to be a good excuse. Everyone is dying of a horrible disease and it’s up to you to single-handedly fix it.

Alright. This one you can prepare for. In this case a disease breaks out that terrifies the nation. All countries immediately break trade with you, and you are stuck isolated until you can fulfill four criteria. Thankfully, they are not unreasonable. If you got a nest egg saved and want to be prepared in case this crisis pops up, two easy things you can do.

1. Have a University.
2. Buy Dr. House.

Honestly, if you got them this crisis is fairly simple. The other really odd thing you need to do is blockade all your Borders for 5 turns. (Go into your regional map, and press border control on each of them. It doesn’t block trade, just transit) Then, boom, done.

Terrorist Crisis

Mr. President, I hope Farouk isn’t your intelligence minister, or yo gon’ die.

A pro-democratic liberation front is trying to force you to yield power. They are hiding out somewhere in a foreign nation, and it’s up to you to figure out where. You’re going to need to have an Intelligence agency, a Counter-Terrorism unit, and some level of military. Without the military, you’re not going to be able to complete this effectively.

For this, the surefire way to discover where the terrorists are is to raise your Intelligence budget to 30m per turn for a few turns. You can adjust how much money goes into the fine art of spying on your neighbors in the same panel you set your taxes from. With that information in hand, you can bomb the nation they are hidden in and you win the crisis. Here’s the weird thing about that. Last time I had this event, a rival nation attacked me right as I was about to finish the turns, blowing up my Intelligence Building. Twice. I didn’t have the military or the income to keep attempting it, so I got assassinated not to long after that. So make sure you got a decent military or a nuke to spare.

Secessionist Crisis

Mr. President, a marginalized group doesn't want to be marginalized! Help!

The Qarifii people are a subdivision of your great nation. You may have noticed you have the occasional “Qarifii approval up” or “Qarifii approval down” well that eventually comes to a head. If you’ve been treating them poorly, expect insurgency. If you have been treating them well, when they ask for elections (Assuming you grant them) you have a chance to earn their vote fairly. (Or you can pay 100m to alter the results in your favor)

The thing about this is it’s a fairly common reoccurrence, so keep a mental track of their opinion of you, and try to keep them in the positive. (I cannot find anywhere that keeps track of how much they like you or dislike you) If you think you’ve been nice enough to them, you may want to let them hold the election. If they vote to stay in the nation, that is a huge vote of confidence for the regime, and you can use it during the Civil War.

Speaking of…

The Civil War

Mr. President, your Brother is knocking. And he brought friends.

Ah, the final battle. Good versus Evil. You versus your brother. Farouk circles the nation like a hungry dog throughout that game. If a faction’s approval dips to low he tries to curry favor with them in order to start an insurrection. Eventually, however, it simply occurs. He spawns with (usually) around 12,000 soldiers, and the war of attrition begins.

You’re going to need more than a few infantry to win the battle, and superior tactics are supremely useful in that regard. You’ll notice on the crisis page a number of ‘goals’ you can fulfill. If you click on them, they will raise your odds of success. They are as follows.

80% Approval Rating (There is one for each faction.)
Presidential Guard Purchased
USA Relations above 70%
Quarifi Voted to Remain with Basenji
Military Approval Rating above 70%
Great Firewall Constructed
No Disloyal Ministers

The more of these you fulfill, the fewer troops will die in battle, which will help you win the war.
There are three on this list that you should be able to have regardless of circumstance. They are:

Presidental Guard Purchased: They are fairly inexpensive to purchase, and considering you’ll always need them for this, make sure you buy it.
USA Relations Above 70%: It’s not that hard to get the US to love you, even without the Oil bonus. Just be nice, build a hotel, and try to get the president to visit. Plus, you can ask for military units from them to help pad your numbers.
Military Approval Rating Above 70%: You should always have a Military Minister, and thus should always have this ready for you.

To be blunt, this is the final boss. Spare no expense to stay alive at this point. Whatever it takes. Plus, you finally get to kill that Farouk guy. So win-win.

[mgsgt2001]

I was trying to decide whether to purchase this game or not. Which lead me to read your wonderful guide. 10 minutes and several chuckles later, I am convinced. Frankly, my friend, your guide is the best I've seen in a long while. Yeah, I do know it is the ONLY guide, but someone will have to work some to top it. I do so hope that someone (ANYONE) is around to read it. Thanks for writing it. And now, without further adieu, I am off to the game!

[White drake]

For the qarifii crisis, im pretty sure it shows their approval in parliament, in the section above the words "qarifii caucus"

[Censor]

Fantastic guide. Thanks!

[FirikinShuffle]

For the Financial Crisis, if you have an alliance with Russia they will pay half of the necessary cost to bail a company which is super helpful. plus during the civil war with Farouk, instead of the US goal that you need to achieve it instead will have Russia and snice you have the alliance you don't need to fufill it.

[TristyTakeda]

Reading this because its funny. Not that I need it or stuff.

[Kukov]

Amazing guide, thanks - has helped me a lot! I'm trying to get 100% of the achievements and have a question - I tried getting my loyalty points to 0/100 to trigger an early coup, but it didn't work. What's more, if it did I'm not sure I would have won since I had purposefully tanked my likeability with all four factions. Any tips for how to get the courage under fire achievement? Thanks!

[Fearsong]

something to add to the end game: pace the options available. i kinda blew through ALL of them, even though i was already at max, and as the turns passed after that, screwed myself royally. (i thought it was like the infection/terrorist events).

[Frankly Sinatra]

Thank you very much! I'm honored you like it! :D Hope it helps someone!

[Denis]

This is a pretty cool guide. Well done!

[Mayu Zane]

If only there was some way you could have an assassin kill Farouk, or do a smear campaign against him at least. Imagine the hilarious headlines!